


just a few harmless death threats

by suitablyskippy



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Hate Leads To More Hate, Hate at First Sight, Human Experimentation, Pre-Canon, Unrequited Hate Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3316502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he has to suffer the intensely irritating company of a heartless mad scientist with glasses but no basic human compassion, at least today he’s got the one in hotpants. “Couldn't stay away? I kind of get where you’re coming from, actually, since I’m great company and you’re –”</p><p>“Go fuck yourself,” interrupts Karin.</p><p>Suigetsu lets out a half-hearted stream of bubbles, which is basically as close to a sigh as he can get in a vacuum-sealed tank of water. “See, that’s what I’m <i>saying</i> – that I’m great company, and you’re just really fucking annoying.”</p><p>(Living in a fishtank is only the second worst thing about the experimental labs of Hidden Sound.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Set somewhere right at the start of the timeskip, and a sort-of-companion piece to [this Karin POV fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2760686) \-- which takes place roughly around the same time, though I've messed with my own timeline a bit.]

“Excuse me? Hello – hello?” Muffled by the water, there’s some asshole rapping on the fishtank’s glass front. “Hello-o-o? Anyone home?” 

Suigetsu stirs himself awake but not intact, and sinks down to the other guy’s level. He’s peering into the tank with interest, shielding his glasses from the reflection, and he looks exactly as much of an asshole up close. 

“I’m sorry to wake you up,” says the asshole, still rapping on the glass, “if you’re sleeping, that is – but I’m afraid I don’t have very long in the area, and I really can’t say when I’ll be back – and since I’m sure you’d agree with me that it’s best to get this over as soon as possible, it’d be easiest for both of us if you wouldn’t mind –”

Abruptly he congeals, right up in the other guy’s face, and slams his hands flat against the glass. “Let me _out_.”

“– cooperating,” says Kabuto. He blinks. Then he cocks his head, and smiles. “There you are. Would you mind staying like that for a minute? There are a couple of things I’d like to check with you.”

“I’ll cut you in half,” Suigetsu informs him, getting louder, “from top to bottom, I’ll cut you open right down the middle, so fucking let me _out_ –”

“Well, that’s not really much of an incentive,” says Kabuto. “You’re from the Hoozuki clan, aren’t you?” He takes a step back from the tank, fishing a little black book from his pocket. “I admit, even by Mist standards your sword was remarkably high quality, but –”

“I swear, if you’ve even fucking _touched_ my sword I’m gonna –”

“Cut me in half from top to bottom,” says Kabuto, without looking up, “yes, I heard the first time. But it wasn’t one of the Mist’s Seven Swords, so you’re not Hoozuki Mangetsu. And you’re too young to be any other Hoozuki worth mentioning, really, so –”

He flattens the book against the glass, splayed open: on one page is Mangetsu, on the other is Suigetsu. It’s insult to injury that Suigetsu can’t even crow about it, discovering he’s famous enough for foreign bingo books – can’t even _complain_ about it – which he sure as hell wants to, because that’s his Academy graduation photo grinning out at him, and ten-year-old Suigetsu in a brand new hitai-ate was nowhere even close to looking cool enough for the current standards of fourteen-year-old Suigetsu. 

“Mangetsu’s _dead_ – and so are you, I fucking swear it, the instant I’m out of –”

Kabuto retrieves his book from the glass, a pen from his pocket. “You know,” he says, “I _had_ heard rumours to that effect – but the Mist can be so isolated, can’t it? Always very difficult to get reliable information, over on the mainland... So!” – and he strikes out Mangetsu’s image with a heavy black X before tucking the bingo book away again. “Hoozuki Suigetsu? My name’s Kabuto – it’s a pleasure to meet you, Suigetsu-kun, though I can’t pretend I wouldn’t much rather be talking to your brother.” 

“I’m _gonna_ fucking kill you,” Suigetsu assures him, “cut your fucking guts out like a fish, gonna –”

“But then,” says Kabuto, with a rueful little shrug, “I suppose we can’t always get what we want, can we? We all have to make do.” 

And instead of listening politely as Suigetsu outlines, in vivid and excruciating detail, his plans for Kabuto’s soon-to-be-decapitated head – instead of showing Suigetsu the basic respect and attention he deserves, Kabuto disappears from sight. 

He’s jumped upwards. The soles of his sandals skid briefly on the tank’s glass side; he hops up into whatever’s above it, into the murky darkness of the basement’s ceiling, and calls down: “I’ll only be a moment, and then I’ll leave you to it; I’m just checking the hatch up here...”

The _hatch_ —? Immediately Suigetsu follows after him, moving up through the water. There _is_ a hatch, set into the lid of the tank, and though it’s sealed securely and waterproofed he wouldn’t need more than the slightest gap: enough for a single drop of water is enough for all of Suigetsu. He melts away in readiness. Footsteps sound above him. 

“Don’t get any ideas,” calls Kabuto, but he’s _way_ too late: the instant the lock clicks open, the instant the watertight seal is broken, before even a sliver of light is showing, Suigetsu sloshes up into the gap to make a break for it – 

An arc of blinding light cracks through the gloom. It’s dazzlingly bright; it reeks of charring static; it’s fucking painful. 

Suigetsu’s back inside the water again when he wakes up. “You’re insane,” he says. “You’re a total psycho, you’re sick in the head – did you _electrocute_ me?”

Perched on the edge of a desk across the room, Kabuto’s expression brightens. “You’re awake?” he says, and consults a wristwatch. “Twenty-two minutes for recovery... Well, I’ll bear that in mind.” He holds up some plasticky piece of junk and taps it: a jolt of electricity cracks out from the end, bright and vicious in the gloom. “I’m sure it’ll be easier for both of us if you don’t try anything like that again.” 

Kabuto’s gonna die – he’s dead _already_ – he’s gonna die slowly, and nastily, and bloodily, and if he insists on keeping Suigetsu separated from his sword then he’s just gonna have to die by hands and teeth alone –

“Do try to calm down a little,” says Kabuto, and he tucks the plasticky piece of junk under his arm, flips off the lights, and leaves.

“– your fucking _entrails_ ,” says Suigetsu, and stops abruptly. The room is dark, deserted. Apart from the quiet burble of the filtration system, it’s silent. “Oh, you’re fucking kidding me – hey! _Hey_! Get the hell back here, I was talking to you!”

The filtration system keeps on burbling. Watery shadows shift across the floor, eerie in the thin blue light of his tank. 

No one’s coming back. 

 

+++

 

The next time the hatch unlocks, Suigetsu’s got a plan. He’ll clamber out, look appropriately contrite, follow Kabuto to wherever the hell Kabuto wants to be followed, do whatever the fuck it is Kabuto wants him to do, and once he’s worked out the layout of the building beyond this basement he’ll knock Kabuto down, rip his throat out with his teeth, and violently mutilate the corpse. It’s a good plan. It’s a comforting plan, in the weird, endless twilit hours of the tank: and it backfires when he’s unceremoniously decanted instead. 

A few turbulent minutes pass by inside a container, getting carried to fuck-knows-where, and when the container is upended he’s poured out onto a surface so ice-cold he slops himself off the edge of it in alarm before he’s even fully solidified yet. 

Kabuto’s reproving voice: “You could at least _try_ to cooperate –” and then electricity flares, bright and sudden. 

This time, Suigetsu’s still outside of the tank when he pulls himself together from his liquefied, electrified puddle – when he pulls himself _mostly_ together. He’s kind of gelatinous, and he’s having difficulty changing that. The cold surface is a steel-topped operating table, and it’s a moment before he realises: there’s a low electrical thrumming running through it. 

It’s another moment again before he realises there’s a skinny, dainty little knife in Kabuto’s hand. 

“Fuck,” he says, blankly, and then scrambles to sit up. “Wait, no – okay, can we wait a second here, just wait a fucking second –”

Another jolt passes through the table’s surface. It’s not enough to liquefy him, but it’s enough to jellify him: which means Kabuto must have adjusted the voltage since the last time, which is pretty much the most horrifyingly deranged thought in the world and proves, once and for all, that Kabuto is a fucking psycho who’d be doing the whole world a favour if he just let Suigetsu kill him, wouldn’t even need his sword, if he kept his hand off the switch long enough to let Suigetsu drown him on dry land and rip his useless fucking limbs from their useless fucking _sockets_ –

“Could you _please_ be quiet,” says Kabuto, as wearily as though _he’s_ the one whose endless liquid healing capacity is probably about to get some serious exercise, some seriously disturbing exercise, some sick, disgusting, unbelievably _fucked-up_ exercise – “Listen,” says Kabuto, loud enough to drown Suigetsu out, “listen – I’d have sedated you if you weren’t water, but it’s very difficult to calculate dosage when you’re so diluting. So I’m afraid that until I work out how to get around it, all you’re doing is making life harder for yourself.”

The idea that it’s Suigetsu who’s making life harder for Suigetsu, rather than the sick-minded bastard with the knife and the creative electrical wiring and the dumbass stumpy ponytail – it’s enough to knock him speechless. 

“That’s much better, thank you,” says Kabuto, “could you try to keep that up?” 

The blinding glare of the surgical lights shines behind him like a fucking halo when he moves in. 

 

+++

 

It happens a couple more times. It’s – whatever. Suigetsu’s ego is as resistant to damage as the rest of him, but getting moved around the place in a fucking squirt bottle’s enough to cause _anyone_ some grief. There’s a food chain in the world, and apart from maybe when he was a baby and too weak to pick up swords or whatever, he’s never not been at the top of it. And he’s never even _seen_ someone marked ‘prey’as obviously as Kabuto – blunt teeth and glasses, too shit-scared to face Suigetsu without some fucking bit of electric machinery to defend himself, and _everyone_ knows medic-nin are weak as hell in combat, fucking _pathetic_ –

“And yet you’re in there, and I’m out here,” says Kabuto. He tilts his head, for once not even pretending to smile. “It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

It’s fucking embarrassing, is what it is. Suigetsu shows his teeth and melts away again, into the shadows of the deepest water. 

 

+++

 

Kabuto offers him a paper medical gown the next time he’s decanted, which Suigetsu promptly crumples into a ball, soaks with water, and throws aside. It hits the wall and splatters into half a hundred wet lumps of melted paper. “Who the hell is that?” 

“That’s Karin-san – she’ll be helping me out today. And for future reference,” says Kabuto, “a polite ‘no, thank you’ would have sufficed.” But Suigetsu stopped listening at _polite_. The kid sitting on the desk is red-haired and unimpressed, subjecting him to a particularly sour stare. “Karin-san, as you know, this is our resident Hoozuki subject. I thought he might like to preserve his modesty, but I suppose I was wrong.”

“I haven’t even _got_ any of that crap,” Suigetsu says, irritably, “modesty, or whatever... Look, if you’re testing more shit on me –”

“His chakra’s disgusting,” the girl interrupts. “Can I leave?”

“I’m afraid you’re just going to have to put up with it,” says Kabuto. He has the long-suffering air of a guy whose patience is straining worse by the minute. It’s pretty much his usual air; he resorts to it every single time he’s around Suigetsu. “I’m relying on your observation report; you know that perfectly well, don’t you?”

Her scowl turns ugly. “Get on with it, then. I’m gonna throw up if I have to stay in the same room as him much longer – oh, grow _up_!”

Suigetsu had been vigorously miming the act of cutting her throat wide open. Offended, he stops. “ _You_ grow up,” he demands. 

“I said it first, dumbass!” 

It’s true. He bares his teeth at her instead, sudden and violent. Her sour stare lingers a moment longer; then she rolls her eyes and looks away, with a completely unnecessary toss of her hair that’s instantly the single most fucking infuriating thing he’s ever seen in his entire life. 

“Are we all quite finished squabbling now?” says Kabuto, with the bright, barely controlled patience of an Academy instructor confronted with a taijutsu class of hyperactive first-years. “Because perhaps it’s escaped your attention, but I do actually have a test to –” 

“What’s that smell?” Suigetsu interrupts. It’s not bland like freshwater or bland like medical sterility, so it probably isn’t him or Kabuto, so it’s probably her – that’s something girls like, right? Smelly shit? Soap or whatever, _he_ doesn’t fucking know... He wafts his hand before his nose in pantomimed disgust. “It smells like a tree. It smells like a _wet_ tree. It smells like a bunch of wet trees – can _I_ leave?”

“It’s _perfume_!” – and Kabuto, who had barely opened his mouth to respond before Karin yelled him down, lets out a heavy sigh and closes his mouth once again. “It’s cedarwood, you fucking moron – you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know _shit_.”

“I know about not pouring a bucket of _tree sap_ on my head,” says Suigetsu, and at her strangled bark of fury he casts her a look of disbelief. “What the hell is your problem?”

“ _You_ –” and then she abruptly cuts herself off. If she’s trying to wrestle her temper back under control, it’s not working: she’s exactly as loud when she starts again. “Your chakra’s disgusting and you’re getting on my nerves. Shut _up_.”

“Did someone piss in your water bottle this morning? Cos if you’re always like this, you need to get a grip, seriously, you’re –”

“I don’t give a fuck,” she snaps. “Kabuto-sensei, can we just get on with –”

“Kabuto-sensei,” he mimics at once, “listen, okay, how the hell do you even put up with this? She’s already giving me a headache, I’d have killed her off _years_ ago –” 

Karin leaps down from her desk, both hands clenched furiously into fists, and Suigetsu bursts out laughing. “Shut up! Shut _up_ , or I swear I’m gonna –”

“– fight me? Are you gonna fight me?”

“I’m gonna kick your ass, you piece of shit –” he scoots to the far side of the table, still laughing, and she smacks her hands down flat on its steel surface, “– fucking get _back_ here!”

“Karin-san,” says Kabuto. He’s pushed up his glasses, rubbing in exasperation at his eyes. “What have I told you about physically assaulting test subjects?”

“Only under experimental conditions,” she says at once, without averting her weird red glare from Suigetsu, “which these fucking _are_ , this is a laboratory room, isn’t it –”

Kabuto sighs. “Consider this test postponed to further notice,” he says, “as a result of both participants being insufferable in close quarters. You might want to move aside, Karin-san.”

But Kabuto’s flipped the switch even as he says it; a jolt of electricity bursts through the table’s steel surface, and Suigetsu’s back in the water when he wakes up. 

Liquefaction via electrocution’s got no less painful, and it sure hasn’t got any less infuriating – and the ominous promise of a postponed experiment’s still hanging over him – and his mood’s still foul in principle, just on account of remaining stuck in underwater captivity without even a sword or two for company... But the very last thing he remembers is Karin, crying out and jerking back from the table, wringing out her own scorched hands: and that one memory offers enough malicious enjoyment that the next long, blank stretch of time passes in a comparatively cheery blur. 

 

+++

 

She shows up in the basement what feels like a few days later, slamming the door behind her loud enough to startle Suigetsu from his doze. There’s paperwork left out on the desk; Karin studies it with a more than semi-murderous scowl, and meanwhile Suigetsu studies her. It’s a critical evaluation, and by the time she makes a sound of annoyance and comes over to his tank, all he’s concluded is that if he has to suffer the intensely irritating company of a heartless mad scientist with glasses but no basic human compassion, at least today he’s got the one in hotpants. 

“Couldn’t stay away?” he says, conversationally. “I kind of get where you’re coming from, actually, since I’m great company and you’re –”

“Go fuck yourself,” she interrupts. 

Suigetsu lets out a half-hearted stream of bubbles, which is basically as close to a sigh as he can get in a vacuum-sealed tank of water. “See, that’s what I’m _saying_ – that I’m great company, and you’re just really fucking annoying.”

Karin ignores him. She’s crouching down, fiddling with something on the dashboard of controls on the front of the tank – so he melts away and sinks down through the water, all the way to the bottom, right down to her eye-level, so that when he congeals he’ll be right up in her face and she’ll jump out her fucking _skin_ with fright –

“That’s not gonna work, dumbass.” 

Suigetsu congeals anyway. Karin doesn’t even look up. Fucking killjoy. “How’d you know I was there?” he demands. 

“None of your business,” she says. Fine, whatever. Suigetsu stays where he is, just in case she’s more unnerved than she’s letting on, and contemplates the top of her head. It’s bowed in concentration. It doesn’t seem all that unnerved. 

After a moment, he says, “If you’re testing more shit on me, I’m gonna have to kill you too – you know that, right?”

Karin hits the heel of her hand against the control panel. 

“Like – _nastily_ ,” says Suigetsu, already warming to his theme, “like, cut you into pieces. Four of them. Diagonally,” he says, and draws an illustrative X on the glass. “I’ll do Kabuto and that fucking creeper guy first, but if you’re testing on me then you’ll be next.”

“His name’s _Orochimaru_ ,” says Karin, like he’s supposed to feel stupid for not knowing. 

Orochimaru’s come to the basement a few times, but all he ever does is stand there with the lights turned off, staring into the water and smiling a waxy death-mask smile. He’s basically a nightmare that doesn’t go away on waking; like Suigetsu gives a fuck what his name’s meant to be. He flattens his hands against the glass. “Look, I dunno if you’ve ever seen someone get chopped up, but you’re gonna be a fucking mess, seriously –”

Karin hits the control panel again. Harder, this time – it’s kind of amazing how obviously her temper’s fraying. 

“– and cos no one’s letting me use my sword I can’t even say it’s gonna be _quick_ , since I bet I’m getting out of practice, stuck in here –”

The fraying temper snaps. “Shut _up_!” 

“What, because you’re too –”

“– scared, yeah, I’m _so_ fucking scared,” Karin interrupts. She gets to her feet, glowering at him through the glass. “You’re not even the first test subject who’s threatened to kill me _today_ , asshole, don’t start thinking you’re something special.”

His snappy comeback wilts and dies. “Yeah, well –”

“The scariest thing about _you_ ,” she says, and jabs a finger at the tank, “is your teeth. They’re _revolting_.” 

He’d been baring them in aggression. Aggrieved, he shuts his mouth, and scowls after her as she stalks off to the desk. “No need to be rude, is there? If I said –” he pauses for a moment, considering, and in the silence Karin slams open a desk drawer and retrieves a writing scroll, “– if I said your eyes are really fucking creepy, which they are, for the record – _if_ I said that, _then_ maybe –”

Karin kicks the drawer shut again, and sits. “Shut _up_ ,” she orders, so loud it kind of echoes through the basement. “Just shut up and let me do my job.”

“Your job is literally just torturing me,” Suigetsu points out, which he personally feels is a more than understandable reason to do everything _except_ shutting up and letting her do her job – but she just rolls her eyes, and says nothing. 

He shuts up anyway. Not because Karin told him to – _obviously_ not; but he dissolves himself, as much as he can, and spreads out through the whole of the tank. She’s slouching with her cheek in her hand, fed up as anything. Her weird red stare is watchful. The tank should look like empty water: still, somehow, she’s following his movements. 

The longer he spends testing it, the further it moves beyond uncanny; and so eventually he pulls most of himself back together. “Why’re you still here?”

“Not for the company,” says Karin, exactly as grouchy as before. 

“Yeah, good one,” says Suigetsu, “that’s a great joke,” and she shows him her middle finger. “Seriously, why?”

“I’m watching your chakra,” she says. Her expression turns murderous. “Your _disgusting_ chakra – for three hours. And then I’m getting the hell out of here and never coming back, and you can rot down here until you die, for all I care.” 

An instant of what would be horrified silence, if it wasn’t for the gurgle of the filtration system. 

“No,” says Suigetsu, “no, hang on, you said – you just said three _hours_ , but you must’ve meant, like – ten minutes or something, like just a few more minutes, just a...” 

Karin’s expression gets no less murderous. The horrified silence stretches on. 

“I’d rather just get chopped up again,” Suigetsu says, at last. “I’d rather just, like – can I do that? I’ll swap this for getting chopped up again. You go tell Kabuto that, tell him I’ve changed my mind.” 

“Kabuto,” she says, mirthlessly, “ _Kabuto_ —!” and lets out a brief and haunted sort of laugh. “You don’t know _anything_. You don’t know the first thing about Sound. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” 

“I know _you’re_ –”

Karin talks right over him. “Kabuto said he could tell how much I enjoyed spending time with someone my own age.”

The insult cuts off half-formed. “He _what_?”

“Kabuto said it was _nice_ –” the words dripping with malice, “– to see me _getting on_ with you so well the other day.”

“No, he didn’t,” says Suigetsu. “Right? He didn’t say that. You’re kidding, you’re just –”

The look Karin gives him is so vicious it chills him into silence. “Kabuto said it wouldn’t be fair if _he’s_ the only one who has to tolerate the pleasure of your company,” she says, and the impression sounds so like Kabuto it’s uncanny: so fucking prissy it’s a challenge to pick out where the insult’s coming from. “Which means he’s sick of putting up with you, so great work, asshole, this is _your_ fault.” 

Suigetsu swills around the tank for a little while, considering. The water feels no different: maybe she hasn’t spiked it, after all. Maybe she really _is_ just here to appreciate his unique and fascinating chakra. “He’s probably sick of putting up with you as well, though,” he offers, at last. “I mean, _I’m_ sick of putting up with you, and I don’t even know you. If I had to work with you, I’d probably just kill you straight off.”

“You’re gonna die in a lab experiment gone wrong if you don’t shut up,” says Karin. 

Suigetsu doesn’t entirely believe her, but there’s a mad kind of look in her eye, and if she’s crazy enough to work for Kabuto then her temper is probably at least a _little_ dangerous: so he lets out another exasperated stream of bubbles and subsides. 

Just for the time being, though. Just for long enough to let her think she’s got her way.


	2. Chapter 2

“You wouldn’t last a _minute_ in the real world,” Suigetsu announces, the next time he has company, and Kabuto offers him a bland smile in return: which is even less response than usual, and nowhere near sufficiently interesting enough – and so Suigetsu presses on. “Since you’re weak as hell – and anyway, you’d be dead as soon as anyone saw that dumbass ponytail, I am _not_ kidding –”

“You know what I think might end up being interesting?” says Kabuto. “Whether your development into adulthood is affected by living in extreme confinement. It’s a shame we won’t have a control to compare you against, but all the same, I’m looking forward to the next few years.” 

Suigetsu melts disconsolately away, drifting through the back of the tank until Kabuto finds whatever he wants and fucks off again. No point even _trying_ to strike up a bit of conversation, not with a guy as twisted as that. It’s Suigetsu’s fault for thinking maybe Kabuto could get over his fundamental asshole nature long enough to have a chat with a kid in a tank; he should have known better, but he’s basically just too good a person not to have faith. 

It’s like Karin said, anyway: Kabuto’s visits have already started dropping off. A few times more Suigetsu gets poured out into one of the murky little laboratory rooms, and every now and then he wakes up to see Orochimaru and his freakish smile, still and silent in the darkness of the basement and doing nothing except for _watching_ – so he dissolves himself then, since even the weirdest creep’s gonna have a hard time perving over a tank of formless water... But otherwise he sees mostly no one, and sometimes Karin. She stomps in and talks shit and yells a lot, and adds whatever nasty crap she feels like to the water and leaves again as soon as possible, and gives the general impression of someone who gets out the wrong side of bed so often that her bed itself is probably right in the middle of a snake pit. 

He strikes up a bit of idle conversation again, the next time he has company. Karin flips out immediately. 

“There is _nothing_ wrong with my shorts, bastard, and I don’t know why the hell you even think I care about your opinions, because I _don’t_. Keep it to yourself, I don’t give a shit.”

“Sounds like you do,” says Suigetsu, and Karin growls something unintelligible and kicks the side of a filing cabinet so hard it rattles. It’s been a very dull week. His mood is lifting by the moment. “Sounds like you kinda care a _lot_. Sounds like you’re kinda worked up over it, actually, so –”

“All I care about is you shutting _up_ ,” she snaps, and he pushes away from the glass, grinning. 

“Fucking hell, you’re moody. Why are you always so moody? You should calm down, it’s probably unhealthy to be so moody all the time.”

Karin dumps some shit from one box into another and doesn’t say a thing, like she thinks just ignoring him is gonna be enough to shut him up. 

“There’s an old saying,” Suigetsu begins, a moment later, “in Mist – about kids with red hair?”

She shoves up her glasses. Her expression is turning several satisfying shades darker. 

“It’s just, like – drown them. Just straight off. It’s a well-known fact they all grow up moody as fuck, so it’s basically a precaution.”

Karin straightens up, glaring at him from across the room. He melts away, drifting backwards through the water, but her red stare follows him anyway. 

“Shame you weren’t born in Mist, really – would have made life easier for everybody if you’d just been drowned at birth... Wait,” Suigetsu says, suddenly, “wait, hold on a minute –” because Karin’s crossed straight to the wall-mounted panel he’s pretty fucking certain controls the tank’s temperature, and when those dials get fiddled with _nothing_ ever ends up well. “Fuck, _wait_ – what are you doing?”

Karin turns one of the dials. Somewhere in the base of the tank, there’s a sudden, heavy glugging sound. “That glass won’t break even if the water boils,” she informs him. 

It takes him a moment. Then the first jet of warmer water moves through him, and realisation with it – and he pulls himself immediately back together. “You – what the _fuck_ , Karin, that’d fucking kill me!” 

“Yeah, and I’d cry myself to sleep about it.” The look she gives him is sour as hell. “It wouldn’t, anyway. That thing’s sealed, you wouldn’t lose any water. You’d be fine.” _Unfortunately_ – she doesn’t even need to say it; he hears it anyway. 

The glugging in the base of the tank is still going – getting louder? getting faster? And is the glass warmer already? Fuck, he can’t even fucking _tell_ – and Suigetsu claps his hands against the glass, outraged. “You’re the biggest bitch I’ve ever met,” he announces, and she just fucking proves it by flipping him off. 

“You can shut up or get boiled, whatever. You’re getting on my nerves, and I’m trying to _work_.”

“ _I’m_ getting on _your_ nerves?” he begins – but then Karin twists the dial again and a sudden rush of fresh water jets up into the tank, warmer still. “Fuck, okay! Okay! Turn it down already, fucking hell, _seriously_...”

A few harmless death threats! – a few harmless death threats, and she pulls shit like _that_! He bets she’d still get mad if he called her unreasonable, too, which is even _more_ unreasonable... He settles into resentful silence, watching through the glass as she goes about her business. He can’t even remember the last time someone showed him the respect and attention he deserves; fucking _nobody’s_ scared of him nowadays. It’d be enough to hurt a guy’s feelings, probably, if the guy in question wasn’t as totally assured of his own greatness as Suigetsu is, and always has been.

 

+++

 

The days go by, and the weeks go by, and the filtration systems burble on and the water doesn’t get notably staler – which isn’t to say that it _doesn’t_ get staler, just to say that Suigetsu gets so used to putting up with whatever nasty shit Karin feels like adding to it that he probably wouldn’t even notice if it had, probably wouldn’t even notice if she just swapped the whole thing out for a massive vat of piss, seeing as more than likely he’s just gonna go insane anyway if he’s kept down here much longer, alone, abandoned, in the dark –

“Some of us are _busy_ ,” says Karin, when she deigns to finally return, and slams her way through about a dozen refrigerated cabinets before whirling around to glower at him, a tub of something probably toxic and disgusting in her hand. “Some of us have _jobs_ to do. Some of us can’t just float around all day like a lazy piece of shit.”

“If you wanna swap for a bit, I don’t mind,” Suigetsu says, generously. “I’d even hold the lid down once you’re in here, if you wanted. Or if you didn’t. Either way, whatever – just to keep you in there. Just in case you changed your mind.”

Karin scowls up into the tank, but Suigetsu’s sloshing around at his preferred conversational point: right beneath the lid, directly under a ceiling light that gets her squinting half-blind every time she tries to stare him down, and it doesn’t last. “Whatever,” she says, and stomps her way over to the desk. 

He follows her around to the front of the tank and watches for a bit, offers his commentary on the generally inadequate quality of her work, but she’s pretending to ignore him and he wasn’t kidding, earlier: he _has_ been kind of getting used to this. People get used to all kinds of crazy shit, sure, he knows that much – the Mist got used to letting most of its children live past the age of ten, and that’s way bigger than getting used to a tank – but it’s different when it’s him. It’s _personal_ : and that makes it a hundred times more important than anything else in the world could ever be. 

Suigetsu congeals himself together. “How long have I been here?” 

“You think I’ve been paying attention?” Karin doesn’t look up. She’s grinding down some shit in a bowl that’s probably gonna taste like hell when she dumps it in his tank. “A month,” she says, after a moment. “About a month,” and she slams the stone pestle against the bowl with an even more violent enthusiasm than before. 

“A _month_?” It was – _at least_! – a month before he even stopped shouting Kabuto down with death threats every single time he opened his mouth, he’s sure of it – he’d swear it on his own sword, if presumptuous Sound-nin assholes hadn’t gone and confiscated it. Suigetsu watches her suspiciously, his hands flat against the glass. “Are you fucking with me?”

Karin snorts. “You wish.”

“What?” he says, blankly. Then realisation dawns, and he wrinkles his nose in revulsion. “Oh, gross – _gross_. Don’t flatter yourself, I’m _way_ out of your league.” 

“Only because my league’s up _here_ ,” a violent jab of the pestle, “and yours is down _here_ ,” another violent jab of the pestle, way down low to the floor, so low she has to scoot her chair back from the desk to reach; and then she scoots it right back in and resumes her work, hammering the stone against the bowl so hard it’d probably shatter if she was any less embarrassingly weak than Suigetsu reckons she probably must be, in his professional opinion, which he’s developed just from studying her whenever she comes and stomps her way around his basement. He’s developed a lot of opinions about Karin that way. He’s told her most of them; she hasn’t appreciated any of them. 

“You wanna be careful,” he says anyway, helpful as ever. “That bowl’s probably gonna break if you keep imagining it’s me.” 

Karin keeps on pretending she’s ignoring him. Suigetsu’s pretty sure she’s not, though. She couldn’t ignore him if she tried, and she does try – she tries _constantly_. 

“If you _were_ in my league,” Suigetsu starts again, after a moment, “then I’d have to leave it. I wouldn’t wanna be in any league that’d have you. I wouldn’t wanna be in a league anywhere _near_ you.”

“Lucky you’re not, then,” snaps Karin. She’s aiming for derisive; she misses by a mile, and matters go downhill so rapidly from there that it’s barely any time at all until her temper shatters: and the chair is kicked with a clatter to the floor as she leaps to her feet, hurls the stone pestle at the tank, and storms out. 

The room rings with the echo of the slammed door. The pestle rebounds violently from the glass and rolls underneath a cupboard. The bowl of half-ground whatever sits forgotten on the desk. She’ll be back for it whenever she remembers, or maybe whenever Kabuto asks after it, or maybe once the worst of her temper tantrum has started to blow over. Usually, Suigetsu’d prefer if she didn’t come back at all, but lately Karin’s taken to ruining even the peaceful few hours which should be his and his alone by showing up in his fucking _dreams_ – following him around the harbours of Mist and complaining that it smells like fish, getting in the way when he’s just trying to disembowel Kabuto, giving him a hard time when he’s not even _conscious_.... 

It’s psychological torture, is basically what it is. Karin’s found a way to piss him off even more than usual, and it doesn’t fucking matter if she doesn’t even know she’s doing it: Suigetsu’s not gonna let her get away with it. 

She’ll be back. He’ll make her regret it. 

He’s kind of looking forward to it, to be honest. 

 

+++

 

She doesn’t give him the chance. The next time the basement door opens, days later, Karin barges in before he can even speak and plants herself in the doorway with her hands firmly on her hips. “There’s a new guy,” she announces. 

“There’s –”

“ _And_ ,” says Karin, louder still, “I’ll hook your filtration system up to the septic waste if you bother him, so don’t you fucking dare.”

“If he’s got you on his case, the poor guy’d probably _appreciate_ me bothering him,” Suigetsu points out, but Karin just scoffs, and somehow manages to make pushing up her glasses look like she thinks it’s a threatening action. “What sort of new guy are we talking here, anyway – is this like he’s in a cage or he’s gonna be cleaning out the cages, or –”

“Neither,” she says – and then her expression gets so weird it’s kind of stressful even looking at it. “You wouldn’t understand, anyway.” The weird expression gets weirder still. “You’re _way_ too stupid to understand. I’m just telling you now so you know about the septic waste, because I mean it.” 

“What’s wrong with you?” Suigetsu demands. “You look weird. Why are you making that face?”

Karin stiffens. “What face? There’s no face, I am _not_ making a face – and it wouldn’t be any of your business even if I _was_ making a face, which I _wasn’t_ – so go fuck yourself, I don’t have to talk to test subjects,” and the door slams behind her with a crash that knocks an empty jar from its shelf to shatter on the hard stone floor. 

The weird expression was a smile. The echo of the slammed door is still ringing through the empty basement, and it hits him all of a sudden: it was _definitely_ a smile. 

He’s _never_ seen her smile.

 

+++

 

The sound of Karin’s voice at anything less than top volume is so unfamiliar that it takes Suigetsu a moment to recognise that it’s Karin who’s speaking, when the basement door next cracks open. In a hushed and urgent whisper, she’s already mid-tirade: “– in that thing, but it’s not worth your time, honestly, we’d be better off just skipping the dungeons and spending some quality time together instead – since I’m sure Lord Orochimaru would agree it’s _very_ important you get to know the staff –”

There’s another voice, lower than hers. The door’s stopped halfway; in the gap, in the shadows at the bottom of the staircase, there’s a flash of Karin’s red and violet beside a figure in black. The last time Suigetsu had a visitor who wasn’t Karin it was Kabuto, and before that it was Orochimaru, and apart from that, he doesn’t _get_ visitors. 

The door’s still not opening. They’re still both talking. 

“You know,” Karin’s saying, her voice still hushed – still _weird_ , and Suigetsu melts away and listens in, even more intently than before, “you know – we could have _much_ more fun if we just left right now and went somewhere else. Alone. Alone _together_.”

The lower voice again – and then a dark-haired kid dressed all in black shoves back the door and comes in. 

Like his own personal stormcloud, Karin follows right behind him. “We’d have more fun if we went literally _anywhere_ else,” she’s saying, and though her voice is still lowered she’s sounding much more like herself: snappy and irritated, and already irritating. Her grip on the kid’s arm tightens. “Sasuke, come on, let’s just –” 

But the kid resists her attempts to pull him manually from the room. He’s frowning into the tank from a few steps back, so ferociously straight-backed it looks kind of like he’s got a stick the size of all Hidden Sound rammed up his ass. 

“ _Sasuke_ ,” says Karin. She’s eyeing Suigetsu with an expression like she’d kill him if she could – which is fair enough; the feeling’s mutual – and Suigetsu, still liquid, sloshes nearer to the front of his tank, studying his newest visitor with interest. Karin’s glare follows him. She tugs at the kid’s arm again, hovering so close she’s basically breathing down his neck. “I mean it, there’s _nothing_ interesting here –”

“I can see chakra in there,” the kid says. His voice is flat, weirdly uncurious; his eyes are the same freakish blood-red as hers. 

Suigetsu remains unhelpfully liquid. No point bothering a guy Karin doesn’t want bothered unless he knows _why_ she doesn’t want him bothered, and she’s still watching him, eyes narrowed in suspicion behind her glasses. “Yeah, well. Maybe he’s asleep,” she says shortly. “Who cares? Useless, lazy bastard like that, I wouldn’t put it past him. We’re leaving, come on.” 

Sasuke shields his eyes from the bright lights above the tank, frowning up into the water. “I want to speak to –”

“You _don’t_!” snaps Karin – and then she grits her teeth, tries to calm down – completely fails to calm down, and instead seizes Sasuke by the wrist with a grip that looks halfway to bone-breaking. “Are you even listening to me? I said we’re _leaving_ –” 

Suigetsu congeals most of himself together. “You’re _so_ annoying,” he announces. 

Karin jerks around, glaring at the tank with a look like murder. Sasuke’s stare has snapped up to find him and Suigetsu grins at him with all his teeth: it’s scary. It’s totally scary, he’s spent _years_ making sure his grin is as totally scary as it can be, and Sasuke has the grace to very poorly suppress a twitch when he sees it. “You wanna talk, right? Don’t listen to Karin, I’m great at talking. What’s up?”

“Hm,” says Sasuke, and, “ _No_ ,” says Karin, at the exact same time, and plants her hand in the small of Sasuke’s back to shove him onwards to the door. “You’re wasting your time, Sasuke – and you’re wasting _my_ time – and we’re getting out of here. This way,” she orders, and gives Sasuke another shove – a shove which slides lower, _shamelessly_ lower, like she thinks the shadows at the edges of the room are enough to fool Suigetsu into not noticing the fact that her shameless hand has just found its shameless way onto Sasuke’s butt. 

“You told me not to bother the new guy!” he yells. “How is feeling him up not bothering him? Karin, hey –”

“Fuck off and die!” Karin yells back, which is not an answer. “Fuck off and _evaporate_ and die!”

The door slams. 

The hilarity lasts as long as it takes to do a few brief, celebratory laps of the tank; and then Suigetsu comes to a halt, mostly, though momentum carries a few litres of him forward, swilling again around the inside of the glass. It’s not often anyone wants to talk to him, after all – and it’s not like Karin’s hair-trigger temper has got any less insanely irritating – but maybe, _maybe_ – there might be a line between, like – harassing her until she storms out? And harassing her just enough that she only _nearly_ storms out... 

The ceiling lights are still on; he’s casting a weird, insubstantial shadow on the floor of the basement. It’s not his problem Karin’s too fucking moody to talk to, is it? Not _his_ problem she insists on overreacting to every single little thing, instead of holding a civil conversation the way that normal people do. 

Something in the base of the tank gurgles once, and goes quiet. He melts away in a sudden fit of resentment. His watery shadow disappears. 

 

+++

 

It probably isn’t decades, though it kind of feels like it; it’s probably days. Maybe only one of them. Maybe less than that. Either way: Sasuke comes back later, all alone. 

“Nice pyjamas,” says Suigetsu. “Did you sneak out of bed to come see me?” 

Sasuke frowns instead of answering, which is still basically a yes. The pyjamas are navy and buttoned at the collar. They aren’t even all that nice. He says, “I can do what I like.”

“Alright for some,” says Suigetsu, and irritation flickers across Sasuke’s expression; his hands twitch briefly at his sides. It’s kind of obvious how hard he’s trying not to fold his arms. It’s kind of obvious how hard he’s trying, full stop. “What’s up, then? You just wanna chat?”

Sasuke’s grim stare is scanning across the tank, trying to track Suigetsu’s movements from his voice. He says, “You can fight.”

“Sure,” says Suigetsu. “You’ve heard about me, right? I’m pretty famous, I’m not gonna be surprised if you have.”

“No,” says Sasuke. He makes a face like there’s a pellet stuck in his throat he’s trying to dislodge; he says, “Kabuto told me.”

“You don’t wanna talk to that asshole,” Suigetsu advises him at once. “You wanna steer clear of that guy... What else did he say about me, exactly? Good stuff?”

It’s like watching the screens set up in the Mist arenas, the biggest fights playing live in close-up for the suckers in the high-up, far-back cheap seats – live, but with a few seconds delay, shitty video equipment that projects up all the blood spray with a disconcerting timelapse. Sasuke says nothing, for a moment, and then like he never paused at all he says, flatly, “Do you know who I am.” 

“Not a fucking clue,” says Suigetsu, mainly for the satisfaction of seeing Sasuke’s expression contort with irritation. His temper might be better-hidden than Karin’s – not that that’s saying much, given no one on the entire continent has a worse-hidden temper than Karin’s – but it’s still right there, simmering away at high boil behind that determinedly blank expression, and it’s nowhere near as hard to read as Sasuke thinks it is. “Why, you think I should?”

“My name is Uchiha Sasuke,” says Uchiha Sasuke, with the weighty, unsmiling gravity of a kid who’s expecting a reaction other than laughter. 

Laughter, though, is all he gets. “No, it’s – that’s cool,” Suigetsu says, once he’s got it out his system. He keeps his tone encouraging. “Probably? Like, is that meant to mean something to me, or...?”

“Orochimaru’s teaching me,” Sasuke says shortly. His temper is slipping and he’s not trying to hide it anymore. “I want to talk to you. It’s in your interests to talk to me.” 

The still, deathly quiet of the basement is disturbed – the heavy door shoves back – and there’s Karin, her hair wild with sleep. “Iknewit,” she says immediately, and goes straight for Sasuke, “I woke up and I just knew it, I _felt_ you down here –”

“—you felt him _up_ down here,” Suigetsu interjects, helpfully. 

She gives him the briefest of dirty looks. “Fuck off,” she says, too humourless to appreciate either his input or his wide grin. “You’re gonna get in trouble if anyone finds you here, Sasuke, it’s the middle of the night. You need to leave.” 

Sasuke says nothing, for a moment, fixing his expression back into its unreadable scowl; and then the lid is slammed down on his temper once again, sealed, and shoved away somewhere for Suigetsu to dig out and detonate later – and he says, “What about you.”

“ _What_ about me?” demands Karin. “No one’s gonna find me, I know where they all are. Sasuke, come _on_ –”

“I mean,” says Sasuke, entirely monotonous, “that _you_ found me. So – what about you.”

“I,” says Karin, and stops. “Well, I – _I’m_ not gonna tell. Why would I tell? I didn’t – I didn’t _find_ you, anyway,” she says, and seizes him by his pyjama-clad forearms to pull him closer, drops her voice to a level that sounds disturbingly like it’s meant to be intimate, “because saying I found you sounds like I was _looking_ for you, which I wasn’t, actually, because I knew exactly where you were – because now that I’ve met you, Sasuke, I’ll _always_ know exactly where you –” The weird soft voice disappears; she whirls round to the tank. “Will you _shut up_!” 

“Wasn’t saying anything,” says Suigetsu – which is true; he’d been laughing, and still is, bubbles streaming upwards through the water. “Sasuke, seriously, if she can’t keep her hands off you then it’s her problem if you chop them off – you know that, right?”

“Shut _up_!” she yells again. “Shut the fuck up, stop talking shit – _shut up_ –”

“You got to ditch Karin,” he calls, lifting his voice over hers, “if you wanna get anything done around here – cos this is just the way she is, she’s always just _like_ this –”

Sasuke’s severe frown has picked up more than a trace of bewilderment. He’s letting himself be towed towards the door, but he’s looking back over his shoulder, too: his attention’s so split it’s kind of flattering. And Karin – she’s as furiously red as her own hair, and looking with every moment more and more like she’s about to burst into tears of anger – of humiliation? – of _whatever_ , all Suigetsu knows is that it’s the sharpest thrill of excitement he’s had since this entire fishtank nightmare began. 

“Shouting – and ordering people around, and getting on people’s nerves – and always getting so worked _up_ about things –” the basement door is open now; he drops his voice to a commiserating undertone, “like talking to me, and pawing at you, and –”

“I hate you,” says Karin. Her voice is fervent. “I _hate_ you.”

Suigetsu pauses, waiting without realising he’s waiting – but the usual torrent of invective doesn’t follow. Just a single passionate statement of fact, left out there all on its own, and the door has slammed behind them before the surprise gives him his voice back. 

“Well, I – _hey_! I hate you too! Get back here, hey, I said –”

Neither of them does. 

“Fuck’s _sake_ ,” he says, to no one at all. 

 

+++

 

“So I was thinking about Sasuke,” he begins, “and no offence, but –”

The door hasn’t even fully shut behind her; she wrenches it back open and leaves without a word. 

“Oh, come _on_ ,” says Suigetsu, to no one at all, and sinks unwillingly back into doing nothing at all. 

 

+++

 

Karin doesn’t show up for a while, after that. 

“Good riddance,” Suigetsu tells the basement, but it’s pretty fucking crazy to be talking to an empty room, and with no one to respond it starts to irritate him how his voice sounds underwater, too: so he sinks into a sullen silence and stays there. 

It’s a while before _anyone_ shows up, after that; and when the basement lock finally clicks open, it’s some guy who flicks an uncomfortable glance towards the tank – and nothing more. The guy’s not looking at him. He’s _really_ not looking at him, keeping his eyes firmly down while he fucks around with the temperature controls. 

Suigetsu watches him for long enough to conclude that watching him isn’t gonna get any less boring, and so he congeals most of himself together and says, “Where’s Karin?”

The guy jolts upright in alarm. Suigetsu hasn’t had that effect on anyone for a while now: it’s less gratifying than it should be. “You – where’s who?”

“ _Karin_ ,” he says again. “Loud, full of shit, really fucking annoying, you probably hate her. Where is she?” But the look he’s getting is about as blank as it is wary. “Spends all her time sucking up to Kabuto,” Suigetsu says, impatiently, “stupid uniform, way too bossy, red hair –”

A light of recognition flicks on. “She’s been transferred out,” says the guy. 

“She _left_?”

“That’s what I heard,” the guy agrees. “A few weeks ago, apparently – halfway across the continent,” and then he seems to realise he’s gossiping with the half-melted contents of a fishtank in the basement of hell, and he cuts himself off, consults a chart and twists a couple of dials. The water in the tank is getting rapidly colder. 

“She never told _me_ she was leaving,” Suigetsu says. 

“Why would she?” says the guy. 

It’s not easy to shrug underwater. It’s easier to show teeth, and much more satisfying, too: the guy flinches when he looks up. 

“Good riddance, anyway,” he says, at last. “Fucking irritating, I’ll be better off without her.”

The light’s still on when the guy leaves. The water hasn’t stopped getting colder yet, but whatever, Suigetsu’s water too: he gets colder right along with it. If it reaches freezing point, someone’ll come along to thaw him out. 

The filtration system gurgles. 

Over on the desk, a single green light is flashing. 

A vision of his tank-trapped future stretches out before him: quiet and tranquil, undisturbed, peacefully Karin-free.

The horror is only dawning on him slowly: he’s never been so bored in his life. He _misses_ her.

**Author's Note:**

> [Any comments would be appreciated! ♥ And if you ever feel like talking about Team Taka-related subjects, I'm [over here on tumblr](http://www.uzumakiwonderland.tumblr.com/), where I talk about just about nothing else, ever.]


End file.
